He was Nakat now.

Nakat, gnoll scientist.  Who woulda thought there’d be such a thing?

Of course, he couldn’t get a straight answer out of the creature about what kind of science it had been doing… just lots of crying and begging for forgiveness.  These creatures sure had a lot of hangups about rationality.

Anyways, he’d made it promise upon pain of death to stay away for at least 24 hours.  If for some reason this Quest took longer then he’d be in another body by the time the gnoll came back.

He walked from the forest to the city’s gates, enjoying the first completely open sky he’d seen in a long time.  Beautiful blue sky, with only a couple green and orange streaks in it.  Not clouds: streaks.  Cool.

When he finally meandered to the gate the guards were staring at him.  Had he done something bad?  Was there some hidden protocol where he supposed to walk directly to the gate?

“Forget something?” one of them asked.  Jerome was wearing Nakat’s clothes, and had stolen its bag, so the guard probably recognized him.  Nakat had just walked out of that gate less than half an hour ago… Subterfuge was clearly not Jerome’s strong suit.

Yet.  It wasn’t his strong suit yet.  If there was anything he’d learned from this game, it was that progress was possible.  By practicing (ugh) and finding a hot chick to give him quests (yay!) he could make something of himself.

Was there a level for Subterfuge?  He scrolled through his notifications and it didn’t show him learning anything like that recently.  The closest was Sneak.  Did that mean he couldn’t get better at it?  No, that couldn’t be it.  There was no “combat” skill that he could level up; to be effective at combat he had to level up other skills and then put them together in intelligent ways.  Subterfuge would be the same.

“I think he forgot how to talk.”

Right.  He was standing in front of two guards, one of which had asked him a question.

“Science mind,” Jerome said apologetically.  “Hard to make it work on non-science things.”

Apparently that was a good enough explanation, because they didn’t stop him as he walked forward.

The gnoll city wasn’t large, but it was densely packed and filled to the brim with… well, gnolls.  And everything that entailed.

The smell was the worst part at first.  His nostrils were more sensitive as a gnoll, but the smells that he considered pleasant and unpleasant were still his old human tastes.

It wasn’t long until he saw his first fight break out.  It seemed the stereotype about gnoll infighting was true.  But then… a policeman came and broke up the fight.  They really were serious about creating a civilization here.

Architecture in this city had some resemblances to earth architecture — gravity did seem to work the same here, after all — but there were also some wild departures.

Walls and buildings were white stone, seemingly drawn up out of the very earth with no separation between foundation and sides.  While the outward-facing walls were nearly perfectly smooth, many of the walls in the city itself were roughly textured, and occasionally he saw gnolls climbing up them.  The dome-like tops of some of the buildings were irregular, beyond just a rough texture, but that appeared to be more the result of heavy impacts rather than imperfections in workmanship.  That must have been incredibly difficult to pull off.

Then there were the nets.  Draped over the main walkways at strategic intervals were heavy nets, with ropes nearly as big around as his arm that were woven together.  He could fit his head through one of the holes in the nets if he had the Rocket Blast ability, and maybe even his whole body.

Were the gnolls were scared of open sky?  The nets might be able to slow down an ockdine that had been cannon-shot into the middle of town, but it probably wouldn’t stop them completely.  They’d crashed through trees just fine.

Well, no use wondering about this town’s defenses.  He’d gotten through them and that was what mattered.  Now he just needed to find a shop to buy his crystals and sell him the goods.

So far as he could tell the gnolls hadn’t developed widespread literacy yet, so the various shops were marked by icons depicting what happened inside them.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that this city was big enough that not all the shops were in one neat little row.

Eventually he went into one that looked promising: it just had coins on it.  That would mean either general store or bank, and they didn’t look quite far enough along to have huge banks.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

As soon as he went in he was pleased to see the shelves lined with goods of all different types.  A general store it was!

“Glory and elevation to our race,” the gnoll at the counter said as greeting.  “How can I help you?”

Glory and elevation to a race?  Jerome knew the gnoll meant species, and not race as it was understood on earth, but hearing those words still sent shivers down his spine.  The World Government had made it clear: everyone deserved life, leisure, and the pursuit of pleasure… except racists and those who associated with them.  It took everything he had not to go running out of the store right then.

This was a different culture, and to infiltrate it he had to play by their rules.

“Glory and elevation,” he said, carefully leaving off that last part.  “I’d like to sell some crystals.”

The shopkeeper studied him.  Had he done something wrong?  Maybe he should have eavesdropped on such interactions first.

Mentally he gave himself +1 Subterfuge for figuring this out.

“I could ask how you got those crystals as a scientist, and why you’re trying to sell them to me instead of directly to a government official… but I’m not going to ask those questions.  In exchange I’ll give you half of what the king is paying.  Does that sound good to you?”

Half of what the king was paying?  And why were crystals going to the king?

It was a super-weapon.  It had to be a super-weapon.  That was the only reason people ever collected large amounts of precious stones in fantasy games.  It would explain why they needed science.  Of course they wouldn’t study medicine or chemistry or anything like that.  It would be all super-weapons all the time.

“Well, how about it?  Or I could get an official right now and have you try and sell to them.  For some reason I suspect you wouldn’t want that.”

Scientists, it appeared, weren’t supposed to come across crystals.  They’d pulled the crystals from corpses so… did the shopkeeper think he was a grave-robber?

And how did the gnoll know he was a scientist?  It must have been something in the clothing that got copied or the bag he stole.

“I’ll sell to you,” he said at last.  Hopefully half would be enough.

Jerome laid out the seven crystals in front of the shopkeeper, who inhaled sharply in surprise.

“You don’t mess around, do you?  Well, no matter.  A deal’s a deal.”  The gnoll counted out nineteen gold coins and seven silver coins.  That was simply amazing.  On the gnolls they’d looted (okay, that Krystyna had looted) they’d only found one gold coin and twenty-three silver coins.  He didn’t know the exchange rate, but he was pretty sure that a gold coin had a value many times greater than a silver coin.  What that translated into in terms of real goods he still wasn’t sure.

“No better deal than that,” the shopkeeper said.  “You going to take it?”

Jerome suspected that wasn’t quite the truth, but he kept silent.  A fight here would be ill-advised; it was true that if he was mobbed he could keep switching forms, but each switch took some time, and who knew if there were abilities out there that could one-shot him.  If someone with those abilities existed in the gnoll empire it was pretty likely that they would be in the capital city.  “Yeah, I’ll take it.”

“Good,” it said with a chuckle.  “I knew you’d be rational.”

With the selling complete, it was now time for buying the three items needed for the Quest.  The shopkeeper only had one, the Bag of Holding, which he sold for two gold coins and five silver coins, complete with assurances that it was the ‘best price in town, guaranteed’.

It was good to know that the used car dealer ethos carried over to an alien planet game-world.

The shopkeeper wasn’t all bravado and bluster, though.  When Jerome asked it for the two items it didn’t have, it helpfully gave him directions to the Mages’ shop.

On the way out Jerome slid his money into the Bag of Holding.  It kept its flat shape, making it seem like there wasn’t anything in the bag at all.  However, when he reached in and thought about the money it seemed to fall directly into his hand.  No fishing around for change required.

Yes, this was going to be a very handy thing to have.  The only limit seemed to be the size of the opening.  He could fit his fist in there, and even his head, but no way his torso and shoulders would go all the way through.  That was probably for the best; if he accidentally fell into his own bag of holding, how would he communicate his predicament to someone in the outside world?

Armor, though it fit the torso, looked like it could be inserted when properly folded or disassembled.

He was nearly whistling as he left the store.  Once he found the scrolls his first Quest would be complete!

Trying to follow the directions, however, was not quite as easy as he had hoped.  It would be too much to ask that this city be laid out like modern earth cities.

Five minutes into this wander another gnoll waved to Jerome with an expression of exaggerated excitement.  “Nakat!  Didn’t expect to see you in this neighborhood.”

Drat!  Someone recognized him.  Time to play it cool.  Inspect them: Rikan.

“Hey Rikan.”

“So formal today,” the gnoll said jokingly.  “Whatever’s got you bothered, don’t bring it to work, you hear?”

Work?

“Come on.  Our shift’s about to start.”